When Someone Sends You A "DRINK-THE-KOOL-AID" Request, Please Click "IGNORE"

Another morning. Another cup of coffee. The sun is shining again today, but it's quickly gone from being pleasantly sunny to being obnoxiously hot. I love the heat just about as much as The Wicked Witch of The West loves taking a shower.

I'm such a wimp when it comes to the heat. Good thing it only gets hot here twice a year.

Anyway, enough about the weather and onto more interesting things. Like Facebook.

I've recently realized that Facebook is a bit of a cult. I tried deactivating my account the other day because I just needed a little break from always having to know who is talking to who and who is playing Farmville. Unplugging from Facebook is not an easy task.

First, it guilt trips you:


Note that it drug my mother into this. If that's not meant to manipulate my emotions, I don't know what is.

It was tough knowing that my own mother and three people I talk to IRL (in real life) would miss me if I dropped out of an online networking site, but I decided to stay strong and click the daunting "DEACTIVATE" button. It asked me why I wanted to leave and told me I could come back at any time. In fact, coming back to Facebook after account deactivation is as easy as logging in. It's even nice enough to save all 700 tagged pictures and archived wall-to-walls for you.

That's another reason I wanted to escape for a bit. I'm sick of having my life archived. I don't want to meet someone new, befriend them on Facebook, and know that now they can see pictures of me when I was 18 and living in the dorms. I also don't want to have to know that much about other people right off the bat. I miss getting to know people the old-fashioned way. I miss actually having to ask what kind of music someone likes. I miss being able to interact with members of the opposite sex without alerting the universe. I miss the ability to loose track of people - you know, to meet people briefly and enjoy their company without having to become a lifetime subscriber to their status updates.

Entire conversations are being replaced with the clicking of the "like" button. Sure, Facebook makes everyone more connected, but it also makes the world seem too small and ultimately lonlier. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much, but it felt like time for a break.

So I deactivated my account. But five minutes later, Facebook sent me an email thanking me for returning and saying that my account had been reactivated. Confused, I trudged over to the site and saw that my account was indeed alive and well. I tried to kill it again, ignoring another guilt trip message. But five minutes later, the email popped up in my inbox congratulating me on my recent reactivation.

This happened four times before I gave up.

Facebook is a cult.